The Doomsday Testament(25)

‘A good question. You ask why, not how. I congratulate you. Why? Because Walter Brohm was a fanatic, one of their worst. Because one of those fragments, though unsatisfactory, is extremely important. In late nineteen forty-two, just before the camp was cleansed of Jews, Brigadeführer Walter Brohm supplied radioactive material and carried out certain experiments on female inmates at the Ravensbrück concentration camp. The women involved in these trials wore a yellow triangle, denoting their Jewish origins. The experiments resulted in the sterilization of all the subjects and the death of many. We know so much about Walter Brohm because he is a war criminal, Mr Saintclair, and he is still wanted by Israel, Russia and the United States.’ He reached into his pocket and produced a business card with his name and phone number. ‘Should you discover anything more about Walter Brohm or require any further assistance, please contact me.’

‘You say he is still wanted. Does that mean you believe he’s still alive?’

David frowned. ‘No one knows whether Walter Brohm is alive or dead. He escaped from a prison camp in April nineteen forty-five and has never been heard of since.’





XI


We left the camp at dusk, nine of us in two jeeps, with the three Germans now dressed in British battledress, but without rank or unit insignia. The instructions pointed us south, towards Nürnberg, but only I knew our final destination. I had orders to avoid contact with military officials of any nation or service. We were on our own. Cut adrift in a Germany tearing itself apart in its final death throes.

JAMIE TOOK A deep breath and laid the journal down. He had returned from the interview with David more disconcerted than illuminated and with the feeling of having thrown a stone into a dark and dangerous pool. Walter Brohm’s past both fascinated and horrified him. He’d heard about the experiments carried out on inmates in the concentration camps, but the thought of Matthew riding in the same jeep as a man such as Walter Brohm brought the war – and its atrocities – closer than he felt comfortable with. It was as if a door had blown open to allow in the smoke from a crematorium chimney. There was also the puzzle of the amount of information David had provided. The sheer detail was astonishing, yet, like the missing years of Matthew’s diary, it left a large gap in the story that needed to be filled. What had Brohm done in the three years after he left the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute? And if his fate was such a mystery, what had been the purpose of Matthew Sinclair’s mission? He stared at the book. Were the answers in those final few dozen entries?

He picked it up again and scanned the pages, not reading now, searching, but his brain must have continued to soak up the words because, gradually, he became consumed by a sense of impending disaster that crept up his spine like a python slithering towards its prey. The realization grew with each page he turned. It couldn’t be? Not Matthew, the man whose newly discovered heroism had given Jamie a whole new belief in his own worth. But there couldn’t be any doubt. It was all there in those neat, tightly spaced sentences, as good as a handwritten plea of guilt.

Captain Matthew Sinclair and his men were helping three notorious Nazi war criminals to escape justice.

He flicked through the pages again, desperately hoping to find something, anything, that would prove him wrong, but there was nothing; no plea in mitigation apart from the five mealy-mouthed words of the Nuremberg defence – ‘I was only obeying orders’.

As he read on, a single word leapt into his head and he was astonished that he could have missed it on the first reading. It was never mentioned specifically by name, but the clues were all there. He felt like a man who had walked into a pyramid and triggered the mechanism that opened the pharaoh’s undisturbed tomb. The pain of Matthew’s betrayal was replaced by a feeling of breathless wonder and his memory took him back to an Italian hilltop town; cool, narrow streets beneath a sun-baked henna roofscape, and a house with a brass plaque engraved with the same word that now made him react like a love-struck teenager.

Raphael!

Raffaello Sanzio di Urbino. Artist and architect. The only man who could stand side by side with Leonardo and Michelangelo and not be dwarfed by their greatness. Raphael’s name might not be as well known, but those with vision recognized his genius and his paintings were characterized by a serenity that was unmatched, even in Leonardo’s Mona Lisa. Those paintings were now valued in their tens of millions of pounds, and from what he was reading it appeared that one of them might have been the price of the three Germans’ lives.

More importantly, this wasn’t just any Raphael.